Plastic closures and containers manufacturer Portola Packaging's North American plants have reduced energy usage by almost 30%. Over the past three years, the company also recycled about nine million pounds of material.
Portola is reporting a 9% reduction in kilowatt hour usage in 2012, besides 8% reduction in 2011 and a 10.5% in 2010, compared to the prior years.
Portola president and chief executive officer Kevin Kwilinski said the company has engaged its employees in the process to reuse, reduce and recycle and encourages its team members to generate new ideas to continue on the path.
"Ultimately, our objective is to create upstream processes which utilize material in the most efficient way possible," Kwilinski said.
In a bid to create better manufacturing processes and promote environmental stewardship, the company's plants recycled more than 3.4 million pounds of scrap resin, corrugated, paper, aluminum and steel in 2012.
More than 20 different initiatives across all eight North American plants - four in the US, three in Canada and one in Mexico contributed to the energy conservation efforts.
The initiatives included attempts to locate and reduce heat and air losses, corrugated case redesign to increase cube footprint, and installation of compressors and decommissioning equipment.
In 2012, production footprints that were found to be inefficient were modified and production was moved to newer, higher-cavitation machines from older, lower-efficiency equipment.
Portola's three international manufacturing plants in the UK, Czech Republic and Russia are also working on a parallel environmental stewardship path, besides its North American plants.
Portola manufactures closures and containers for dairy, juice and other food segments.
